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Beloved [justin]

This man from the wild appeared, drowning people in water, yelling at the top of his lungs about aligning your mind with the divine and having debt wiped clean.

The whole country-side could hear his voice echo off the mountains. People came to him, confessing their faults and failures, how they missed the mark and missed the heart, begging him to drown them.

God-is-a-gracious-giver was his name. He had hair like a camel, leather around his waist, devoured the pestilence that would destroy and washed it down with liquified sugar cane.

Though he was an eccentric celebrity, he said he wasn’t the main act. A mightier one was to follow… one who was so worth while that the earth would eventually be His footstool.

“I drown you all with water, but this mightier one will pour kerosine down your throat and chase it with a match; He’ll knock the wind out of you, but you’ll also receive breath like none other you’ve known.”

God-is-salvation came up from the slums, and had the wild man drown Him.

Then out of the water He came up, resurrected. The sky tore like a curtain in two and you could see the wind fall onto Him like a phoenix looking for its home.

A sound, like a loudspeaker from the cosmos, started to feedback and then proclaimed with a Father’s voice: “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.”

* * * * *

The three of us were terrified. We didn’t know what to say. Was the air too thin on this mountain? Were we hallucinating, our brains playing tricks as it gasped for the oxygen of understanding?

It was like something out of a Kafka story. There, right it front of us, He changed… changed into something different… like a cocoon had just burst open and out of it a worm didn’t crawl, but rather light flew, piercing.

Our eyes adjusted, if only for a moment, and there standing with Him were two men of long ago. (Were they ghosts?)

Both were famous; one a lawyer, the other an arsonists, yet on the same side of the law. We said we’d make a shrine for them as well as for the One who was changing form before our eyes.

But a fog set on us in an instant and we could feel electricity surround us, standing whatever nerves we had left on end. And then, as suddenly as it came, it left, and only He was standing there – alone.

A voice thundered from heaven, but it wasn’t speaking to Him, it was speaking to us.

“This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.”

In all of the confusion, I heard this loud and clear.

* * * * *

take the servant, beat him voidwe don’t owe the owner
strike the second, shame his headwe don’t owe the owner
now the third one, kill him deadwe don’t owe the owner
beloved son, respect notwe don’t owe the owner
so killed the heir, took his plotwe don’t owe the owner
all the tenants, he’ll destroythe owner, to others, will give the land